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People

Helen Rodd

Professor
Graduate Coordinator

MSc, University of Toronto
PhD, York University
PostDoc, UC Davis

Phone
416-946-5035
Office
ESC 3016 and RW 411
Email
helen.rodd@utoronto.ca

Prospective Students:

I am currently accepting MSc and PhD students. Interested applicants should send a CV, an unofficial transcript along with a cover letter summarizing their research interests, academic background, and skills. Please check my lab website for additional details.

Research

My main interests are in reproductive strategies: sexual behaviour and life history traits.  For example, I have studied the ways in which individuals adjust their reproductive strategies to the behaviour and population demography (e.g., sex ratio, density) of conspecifics.   I also study the role of frequency dependent selection (rare male advantage and predator search image) in maintaining the extreme, genetically-based variation in the colour patterns of male guppies in natural populations.  In third set of studies, my colleagues, students, and I have discovered a role of a sensory bias in mate choice decisions of female guppies and of many related species of poeciliids, goodeids and now medaka.